An updated edition of the classic book on digital storytelling with a new introduction and
expansive chapter commentaries. I want to say to all the hacker-bards from every field gamers
researchers journalists artists programmers scriptwriters creators of authoring systems...
please know that I wrote this book for you. Hamlet on the Holodeck from the author's
introduction to the updated edition Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck was instantly
influential and controversial when it was first published in 1997. Ahead of its time it
accurately predicted the rise of new genres of storytelling from the convergence of traditional
media forms and computing. Taking the long view of artistic innovation over decades and even
centuries it remains forward-looking in its description of the development of new artistic
traditions of practice the growth of participatory audiences and the realization of
still-emerging technologies as consumer products. This updated edition of a book the New Yorker
calls a cult classic offers a new introduction by Murray and chapter-by-chapter commentary
relating Murray's predictions and enduring design insights to the most significant storytelling
innovations of the past twenty years from long-form television to artificial intelligence to
virtual reality.Murray identifies the powerful new set of expressive affordances that computing
offers for the ancient human activity of storytelling and considers what would be necessary for
interactive narrative to become a mature and compelling art form. Her argument met with some
resistance from print loyalists and postmodern hypertext enthusiasts and it provoked a
foundational debate in the emerging field of game studies on the relationship between narrative
and videogames. But since Hamlet on the Holodeck's publication a practice that was largely
speculative has been validated by academia artistic practice and the marketplace. In this
substantially updated edition Murray provides fresh examples of expressive digital
storytelling and identifies new directions for narrative innovation.
